Skip to main content

Go ahead - - - act out!

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love! (I John 4:7-12)

Love is the one character trait that stands as the loudest evidence of being born of God. It is impossible for a man or woman to be a child of God and not love, for where God dwells, there is love. There is something we can glean from examining God's love for us - his sacrificial, pursuing, and purposeful love. If we are honest, if God had not pursued us, we'd probably still be doing our own thing - not even realizing how 'lost' we truly are apart from his love! Love pursues what it sets its heart on - God set his heart upon us and therefore, he has pursued us since he made us! His love is sacrificial and purposeful - there is nothing quite like the sacrifice he paid for our sins - his dear Son. There is an "aim" to his love - to remove the damage sin has done within us. His love is purposeful, for purpose suggests intent and aim. Maybe this is what love is really like when we come to fully understand it - there is involvement of the full heart, total mind and whole spirit, not just emotions!

Look at the actions of love - what love "does". It sets about to set right what has been damaged through sin's presence in our lives. Maybe this doesn't seem all that significant at first, but throughout scripture we are told to remedy rifts in relationships, forgiving one another their faults, even when they don't "deserve" it or "seek" it. We are told to be peacekeepers, guarding our tongues so we don't speak rashly - constantly being aware of the power in our words. Even in our own lives, we are told to turn from what has pulled us down and left us empty, then to turn toward the only thing which can keep us standing and fill us to overflowing. We are called to be engaged in this work of "setting things right" - those things that have damaged each of us in some respect. 

Love exhibits loyalty. There is a faithfulness to love - not only in our words, but in our actions, as well. There is an allegiance which is inherent in love - the pledging of oneself to another. God did this as he pledged himself (and his Son) to pursuing us. The same should be true of each of us - we are to pursue not just those who give love in return, but those who have no idea what it is like to experience the level of commitment and allegiance which are characteristic of those who call themselves Christians. Loyalty is exhibited in actions - not in our words alone. There is a willingness to be there for the long haul. Nothing bespeaks love more than standing alongside someone even when they aren't at their "lovable best". Love is also very liberal. It is generous to a fault - it thinks outside of self and considers the needs of others first. Sometimes I think we consider living a "simple" life as kind of boring or lacking in excitement. The simpler my life becomes, the more I find I am able to be liberal in my love. Generous hearts are liberal in their love because they know by giving out, they get more than they'd ever be able to contain anyway! Liberality is not "on impulse" - it is a lifestyle. This lifestyle is born in the times of fellowship with Christ - enjoying his liberality in our lives first makes us more able to share with liberality in the end.

It listens to the Holy Spirit's leading. There is something foundational to love - truth. We only come into truth through the actions of the Holy Spirit in our lives. As we are led by the Holy Spirit INTO truth, it changes the way we interact with others - there is a level of consideration and compassion that is evident because his leading has created a changed heart. It is lowly in its actions. We don't use this word too much today in "conversation", but it really is another word for humble. Love is evident in a lowly heart, not because it thinks "low thoughts" about self, but because humility produces actions contrary to selfishness. When people begin to behave without selfish intent, love comes through. Love is indeed a trait we all need to have evident in our lives. Don't lose sight of what I said to begin with - it is the evidence that we have Christ in our lives - nothing speaks louder or more consistently to those who need lives set right than the love of God in full action in a believer's life. Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,